Ebola: 44 identified contacts to stay isolated for three weeks – Minister

The 44 people identified as contacts of Nigeria’s confirmed Ebola patient will remain in isolation for at least three weeks.

The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Muhammad Pate, disclosed this Tuesday evening during an NTA interview, shortly after the ministry announced Nigeria’s first confirmed Ebola case in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Mr Pate said authorities are currently treating the case as an imported infection and not community transmission.

“At this moment, we are treating it as an imported case, not community transmission,” he said, adding that the situation could change if the virus begins to spread beyond the known contacts.

He said the 44 contacts, including healthcare workers, patients, caregivers and travel contacts, are being isolated at a designated facility in Abuja. At the same time, public health teams determine who may have been infected.

“They remain in communication with their families by phone and other ways, but not physical contact, until we clarify who is infected and who is not,” he said.

Travel manifest obtained

The minister said Nigeria had been conducting risk-based surveillance at points of entry for the past five months through the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) and Port Health Services.

He said the aviation industry had also been an important partner in the surveillance effort.

According to Mr Pate, authorities obtained the infected passenger’s travel manifest, which is helping them identify people who may have been exposed.

He said the patient was asymptomatic when she entered Nigeria and developed symptoms after arriving in the country.

“This makes it less likely that the travel itself exposed folks at risk,” Mr Pate said, while noting that authorities were still investigating the circumstances surrounding her entry into Nigeria.

The patient, an unidentified woman who recently arrived in Nigeria on an international flight from Uganda, is currently in isolation and receiving medical care at a private hospital in the FCT.

Symptoms

Mr Pate urged Nigerians and health workers to watch for symptoms including fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, body aches, and severe muscle pain.

He said the Ebola variant involved in the current outbreak is different from the Sudan and Zaire variants, adding that bleeding could occur but is less prominent than with some other Ebola variants.

The case comes amid an ongoing regional outbreak of Bundibugyo Ebola virus, which the NCDC has been monitoring since the outbreak was reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The minister also stressed the importance of travel history when assessing suspected cases, particularly among people who have recently travelled to eastern Africa.

He said the Abuja patient had no confirmed travel to the DRC, so authorities presumed she was likely infected in Uganda.

READ ALSO: Ebola in Abuja: 10 things Nigerians should know about the deadly virus

“We presume it is likely that it was picked up in Uganda,” he said, stressing the complexity of tracing the source of infectious diseases.

Regional outbreak continues

The Nigerian case comes amid an ongoing Ebola outbreak in the DRC, where the disease has spread across several provinces.

WHO reported more than 8,700 confirmed cases and more than 4,200 deaths in the DRC as of 6 October, with transmission continuing across dozens of health zones. The outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo virus.

Kenya reported its first imported case on 6 October: a Kenyan citizen who had been living in the DRC and travelled to Kenya via Uganda.

On 20 October, Kenyan authorities confirmed a ninth case involving a close family member of the first patient.

Uganda, from which the Nigerian patient recently travelled, recorded 20 cases between May and June 2026. The country subsequently ended its outbreak after completing the required 42-day period without a new confirmed case.